Horror Poster Write-up

Horror Poster Creation – ‘The Blob’


When I was set this assignment I was excited as the genre of the film we needed to use was horror, one of my favourites. Many ideas came to mind, but I decided to go for the 1956 horror classic ‘The Blob’, which was again remade in 1988.
My first idea of what my poster would look like was very influenced by posters I had seen of it already and were in a very 50’s style. The poster I originally wanted while drawing several sketches of different ideas was of people running down a street with a large ‘blob’ behind them. The posters we were planning were actually meant to be contemporary and new, while that idea was more of the older style, not what was wanted. The difference between old and new film advertising was obvious to me, so a new idea came to mind almost immediately. I imagined a female face, covered in slime, with her hand reaching outwards, as if the large blob had actually engulfed her, while the bulk of the creature was not completely visible due to the size and scale of the shot.
I looked on the internet at other horror posters to see if there was a key element to add to mine to make it more like the real thing, which there was in pretty much everyone I saw, which was black. Most had large amounts of black on them, while I planned to have mine featuring purple as the dominant colour, so I decided that instead of having black I would put a lot of dark highlights on the blob itself.
Not knowing of what to do to create the effect of the blob, I thought hard about it. I considered using many kinds of everyday substances that are similar to the texture of that in the film, as well as colour. Being a light purple-pink, I thought that washing up powder thickened with something like flour was a good idea so decided to experiment with it back at house. If I could find some kind of dye to add to it I would use that as well to try and make the colour stand out better.
After making a thick paste out of it I took several pictures and put them on photoshop the next day. I added a purple wash to it and used both the burn and dodge tools to create different shine and shadowy tones over the blob. I then took pictures of a friends arm reaching out as I described to them how I wanted it to look. I cut out the arm on photoshop and put it on the blob, before using the burn tool to match the tones and create more shadow on the under arm.
The text was quite easy to do. For the title I chose a font appropriate to the film, which looked very childish and almost as if the letters themselves were ‘blobs’ and liquefied them for a dripping effect. I chose another font for the tag lines which again was appropriate with the film. I chose to use John Carpenter as the Director of the film, as he is my favourite director having directed, in my opinion, some of the best horror films ever made as well as composed for and written many of them. For the other names for backstage members, I used names I saw on one of the 1988 Blob posters and for stars of the film I used Thomas Jane and Camilla Belle.
I am extremely pleased with the final outcome as I believe the poster is very good for my first poster on photoshop, and am also pleased with the fact I was able to pay homage to John Carpenter as a fan of his work.